Woman, 95, Indicted on 10,000 Counts of Accessory to Murder in Nazi Camp

Public prosecutors in Germany have indicted a 95-year-old woman for her role supporting the Nazi killing machinery as a secretary in a concentration camp, charging her with 10,000 counts of being an accessory to murder, and complicity in attempted murders.

The indictment against the woman, identified only as Irmgard F. under German privacy laws, followed a five-year investigation, prosecutors said Friday. Because she was under 21 at the time of the offenses she is accused of, they said, she would be tried in a juvenile court, where she is likely to receive a milder sentence.

The woman worked between June of 1943 and April of 1945 as a secretary for the camp commander at the Stutthof camp, 20 miles from the Polish city of Gdansk, which was known as Danzig under German rule at the time.

“It’s about the concrete responsibility she had in the daily functioning of the camp,” said Peter Müller-Rakow of the public prosecutor’s offices in Itzehoe, north of Hamburg.

A regional court will decide whether to follow through on the indictment and start a trial, a process that could take from a few months to years.

Last year, a 93-year-old man was convicted in a juvenile court in Hamburg of being an accessory to 5,230 murders when he was a 17-year-old guard at Stutthof.

More than 60,000 people are believed to have died or been killed at Stutthof, which was the first concentration camp to be established by the Nazi regime outside Germany’s borders.